WHY THIS SONG?
Taylor Swift currently has multiple songs on the charts. Each one is a master class in melody and lyric writing you can apply to your own songs in any genre. “Cruel Summer” is filled with songwriting goodies you can use to add listener appeal but still say what you want to say in your song. So let’s dive in!
“Cruel Summer” – Taylor Swift
Songwriters: Taylor Swift / Jack Antonoff / Annie Clark (St. Vincent)
TECHNIQUES TO HEAR AND TRY
• Use an unconventional song structure.
• Write a lyric that gives the listener a vivid experience.
• Create an unforgettable melody using a mix of phrase lengths.
LISTEN TO THE SONG. READ THE LYRICS.
Watch the lyric video on YouTube.
Read the lyric here.
GENRE/STYLE (Pop)
(What is a genre? Watch this video.)
“Cruel Summer” is pure Contemporary Pop. The rhythmical, catchy vocal melody is stretched over the top of a pulsing beat that carries the listener all the way through from beginning to end (just the way radio likes it). The lyric has a witty edge (“Devils roll the dice / Angels roll their eyes”) and a cinematic quality as it unreels, coming to the inevitable ending. All in all, it’s a perfect melodic Pop song for beach listening and an accompaniment for those summertime crushes.
SONG STRUCTURE
There’s a short eight-second intro with a kick drum and bass hook that launches the song with plenty of energy. The rest of the structure looks like this.
VERSE / PRE-CHORUS / CHORUS
VERSE / PRE-CHORUS / CHORUS
BRIDGE (1:40)
CHORUS
BRIDGE (2:27)
Key lines in “Cruel Summer”
- Verse 1: “You know that I caught it…”
- Verse 2: “Hang your head low…”
- Pre-Chorus 1: “Killing me slow, out the window”
- Pre-Chorus 2: “So cut the headlights, summer’s a knife”
- Chorus: “And it’s new, the shape of your body…”
- Bridge: “I’m drunk in the back of the car…”
THE BRIDGE: You can always expect Taylor Swift—and her co-writer on this song, St. Vincent—to do something unusual and make it work. Here, the writers end the song by circling back around to the bridge section in which the summer love implodes and the singer confronts the darker edge hinted at earlier (“shiny toy with a price”).
LYRICS
In the summertime, days are long, nights are warm, and life loosens up. It’s a season for escaping jobs and school, for meeting new people, trying new things, a time when risks are meant to be taken. As the song says, “No rules in breakable heaven.” It’s a time when love may be intense, exciting, but fleeting because, like all seasons, this one comes to an end. There have been several Pop songs about summer love. So, how did these writers manage to say something fresh? It might surprise you.
Get listeners involved from the start
The opening verse of “Cruel Summer” is a great example of something we all need to do in our songs: Get the listener involved right away!
Fever dream high in the quiet of the night
You know that I caught it
Bad, bad boy, shiny toy with a price
You know that I bought it
The fever dream, the bad boy, the handsome lover are the stuff of Romance novels. There’s even a hint of the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene in the first Pre-chorus.
Killing me slow, out the window
I’m always waiting for you to be waiting below
As it happens, Romance novels are the number one selling fiction genre in the world. Here, Taylor Swift is delivering that genre in a song. She knows what her listeners like and she gives it to them in the first five lines.
Try It Now
Be sure the opening lines of your song set up the listener for an engaging experience. Introduce an interesting character and/or situation as this one does. The more intriguing the better. In the second verse, you can go deeper into what’s happening or give some of the history.
Find out more about the power of opening lines.
Share the experience with your listener
Writing about an emotional experience can end up sounding generic and predictable. If you’ve got a lyric with a lot of lines that say things like “I want to be with you” or “I can’t stop loving you,” you’re not really inviting listeners to share the experience with you. And they probably won’t be very responsive.
Here, the songwriters use words that evoke emotions, physical sensations, and actions that listeners can experience and relate to:
- a surreal dream on a summer night,
- a crush on someone with good looks and a bad reputation,
- devils who approve, angels who disapprove,
- sneaking out the garden gate,
- drunk in the back of a car screaming ”I love you.”
- And the physical immediacy of “it’s new, the shape of your body” in the first line of the chorus.
In your lyrics, think about ways to describe feelings that invite listeners to experience those feelings for themselves with images, comparisons, actions.
In my course, you’ll learn how to use imagery to pump up your lyrics.
Was it okay to use the title “Cruel Summer”?
A brief word about the title “Cruel Summer.” There was another hit song with the same title recorded by Ace of Base, Bananarama, and Gym Class Heroes. Titles cannot be copyrighted and the Taylor Swift song is not in any way similar to the previous hit. But I’m sure she checked with an attorney before the song was released, possibly before it was even recorded. Legally, she can use this title.
MELODY
“Cruel Summer” has a strong, contemporary melody. There are a few unexpected twists that keep it interesting and a whole lotta catchy hooks that stick around long after the song is over.
Use contrast to define your song sections
Listeners like to know where they are as a song rolls by. They don’t have a map or lyric to follow, so it’s up to the melody to let them know where they are in the song.
We often identify the main song sections—verse, pre-chorus, and chorus—by moving each one into a higher note range. That’s a good, basic way to do it. But in this song, the pre-chorus is in the same note range, even a little bit lower, than the verse. And the chorus only seems to move higher because a vocal melody is added one octave up, a nice trick for creating the feel of a rising chorus.
Instead of a rising note range, the writers of “Cruel Summer” chose to create the distinction between song sections using a different method: contrast in melody phrase lengths.
Playing with phrase lengths
When you listen to the verse of “Cruel Summer,” notice how long the melody phrases are. There are really only two long melody phrases in the verse. (A melody phrase is like a sentence. You can sense where the musical ‘thought’ starts and ends.)
Verse1 Phrase 1
Fever dream high in the quiet of the night, you know that I caught it
Verse1 Phrase 2
Bad, bad boy, shiny toy with a price, you know that I bought it
This is followed by a pre-chorus with two short phrases followed by a longer one.
Killing me slow – short
Out the window – short
I’m always waiting for you to be waiting below – longer
The pattern of short and long lines (short, short, long) is quite different from the two long lines of the verse. And it’s also different from the chorus.
Try It Now
Listen to the chorus and notice the mix of short and long phrases, and then compare that to the other sections. The bridge has s different set of line lengths, and the repeated see-saw pattern of the note pitches is different, too. In this melody, there are lots of good ideas for creating contrast that you can try in your own songs.
To hear a Taylor Swift song with a strong Pop melody under a Country song lyric, check out my Song Guide to You Belong With Me.
CHORDS – “Cruel Summer”
I usually look for chords on the Ultimate-Guitar.com website but Taylor Swift’s songs are not there currently. Here’s another source.
You’ll find the chord progression for “Cruel Summer” here.
READ MORE HIT SONG GUIDES ON THIS SITE and learn from the hits!
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
My songwriting students David Paul Zimmer and Amanda West got a featured placement for their song “Drowning in the Darkness” in this season’s hit TV series Station 19. Listen to the song on Spotify.
My students and clients have gotten placements in movies, primetime and daytime television, artist cuts, in-store promo, and thousands of plays on Spotify.